image of Mason, standing on top of the train car, her black hair spread out like wings, her sword hanging at her side, both hands reaching out to him as the brightness of the Bifrost bridge portal swallowed her in light.
II
“Hello, Mason. Welcome to Hel.”
“I’m your mother and I’ve been waiting for you.”
And in that moment, Mason knew it was no dream.
The dark-haired woman reached toward Mason but stopped short of embracing her. Instead, she plucked up the iron medallion that hung on a braided leather cord around Mason’s neck. Fenn’s medallion. A talisman that he’d promised would keep her safe. Bring her luck.
“So. He failed . . . and now you are here.”
“I don’t know where here is,” Mason said.
“It doesn’t matter. You have to leave,” the woman said. “At once.”
“You just said you’ve been waiting for me—”
“And I would have been content to wait an eternity.” A humorless smile bent the corners of the woman’s mouth. “Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say I have been
She dropped the medallion back onto Mason’s chest. It hurt when the iron disk hit her skin—as if it weighed far more than it should have. Mason tried, unsuccessfully, not to flinch.
She felt a moaning breeze begin to stir, bringing with it a chill, dreary dampness. Stray wisps of fog rose up out of the ground and swirled all around her. As the mists thickened, Mason thought she could make out shapes, rising up out of the ground with the veil of fog. People—or the shades of them—hunched or stretched thin, they looked like ghosts. On every side, wherever Mason turned, there was nothing but a bleak, wide-open plain as far as the eye could see. She looked down at the ground beneath her and saw faces. Twisted bodies, reaching hands . . . the endless plain upon which she stood seemed as if it was composed of an infinite number of bodies all jammed together into a solid mass. The eyes of the face Mason looked at, numb with horror, seemed in that moment to look back. The ground felt to her as if it writhed ever so slightly. She felt her stomach heave.
Her left hand convulsively gripped the collar of the black leather scabbard that hung at her side, home to her silver, swept-hilt rapier. Her right hand gripped the sword’s hilt. Both her hands were slick with blood. Mason had torn the ends of her fingertips to shreds, ripping away most of her nails, escaping the confines of the trunk of her brother’s car, trying to flee from him.
She still didn’t even know why he’d done that.
And now she didn’t know where she was.
She didn’t, at that moment, care.
One moment, Mason had been standing on top of the transport compartment of her father’s private train as it crossed over the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City. The next, she was standing here. In a twilight-tinged wasteland, a vast empty vista ringed with thunderclouds. It was an eerie, alien place that Mason knew instinctively was very,
The brightness had swallowed Mason whole, then darkness.
Then . . . here.
“Mason! Did you hear what I said?” The words, sharp and commanding, broke her reverie. “For your own good—for the good of
“I don’t know how to get back,” Mason answered, her voice sounding very small.
She turned to face the tall, beautiful woman cloaked in darkness who stood in front of her. Her mother. At least . . . that was who she’d said she was. Mason felt her throat closing against a hot surge of tears.
“I don’t even know how I
“
“You want me to leave?” Mason asked. It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. But the other one stuck in her throat.
“Your presence here is an anomaly.”
“I don’t say that to be cruel.” The woman’s face softened, as if she sensed Mason’s thoughts. “But your presence in the Beyond Realms creates an . . . imbalance. Something that could, if you stay, cascade into something much worse. I’m sorry, but you must go back.”
Her mother reached out for her arm, as if she would drag her forcibly away, and Mason stepped back. Her hand convulsed, sticky with blood, on the hilt of her sword and she almost drew the weapon Fennrys had given her as a gift.
He’d been there.
On . . . on the train.
Fennrys had been on the same train that had brought her to this place. Hadn’t he? Mason squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think about exactly what had happened. But it was all so jumbled—images of blinding light and rainbows that set the sky on fire . . . a massive, eight-legged horse pulling the train . . . and a sleek black wolf that chased them across the bridge . . . and Rory, her brother.
Rory, his arm twisted, the bones shattered in a brutal fight with Fennrys.
Rory . . . with a gun. Not just
Mason could see him, his face purple and distorted with rage, spittle flying from his lips and his mouth stretched wide as he howled at her and pointed the weapon.
He shot Fennrys.
Mason remembered the bright-dark burst of crimson, blooming out from Fenn’s shoulder. Fenn falling . . . tumbling through the air, off the back of the train . . . gone.
“NO!”
Her cry shook the air and was answered by an echoing howl of anguish that sounded as if it came from far away. All of a sudden, as if triggered by the sound, the ground beneath Mason’s feet buckled and surged upward, throwing her backward and away from the dark, stern woman who stood before her. And who added her own cry of denial as a fissure opened up in the ground directly under Mason’s feet and she felt herself tumbling, falling into darkness.
